Emoji Mun Questions@cmpanicn😤 - what is your roleplay related pet peeve?
// I’ve got more than a few. But I think the biggest one recently has been force shipping, especially on the fluffy side.
Now, I’m not talking about flirtatious characters. God knows, I’m always paranoid that someone’s going to mistake Yondu’s being flirty af as force shipping. But when I write Yondu that way, I’m not making assumptions about how a muse is going to respond-- and similarly, other muses can behave however they want toward him, so long as the mun isn’t making assumptions about how he feels.
Yondu’s a character that I struggle to write fluffy things with. He’s not a soft character. He’s mean, he’s violent, he’s got a lot of damage. And though he’s certainly capable of fluff, it takes a LOT of buildup to get to that point. He doesn’t respond to things the same way most people might respond. He’s closed off emotionally-- he’s hyper-aware of how his crew perceives him-- and he has trouble expressing his emotions in a healthy way. So when someone starts making assumptions that his relationship with their muse is going to head in a soft direction-- without my input-- I have a harder and harder time keeping it going.
Prime example, which has come up on multiple occasions: if someone assumes that in a given scenario Yondu’s going to be protective toward their muse. Yondu is not protective. Take his relationship with Peter, arguably the person he cares about most in the universe-- he doesn’t coddle him, he throws him into the deep end of things so he can learn to swim. Yondu lets him take his scrapes and bruises-- lets him get hurt and have the occasional brush with death-- beats up on him so he’ll learn to fight. And all of this is the product of his own upbringing-- he has no model for being a nurturer or a protector. The best way he knows how to take care of someone is to put them through hell so they’ll toughen up.
tl; dr: People making assumptions about how Yondu feels, or is going to feel. He’s not a fluffy character, don’t try to push him that direction unless it’s developing naturally.
